Native American Survivance, Memory, and Futurity : The Gerald Vizenor Continuum

176 Pages·2017·0.635 MB·English

by  Birgit Däwes and Alexandra Hauke

Native American Survivance,
Memory, and Futurity
According to Kimberly Blaeser, Gerald Vizenor is “the most prolific Native
American writer of the twentieth century,” and Christopher Teuton right-
fully calls him “one of the most innovative and brilliant American Indian
writers today.” With more than forty books of fiction, poetry, life writing,
essays, and criticism, his impact on literary and cultural theory, and specifi-
cally on Indigenous Studies, has been unparalleled.
This volume brings together some of the most distinguished experts on
Vizenor’s work from Europe and the United States. Original contributions
by Gerald Vizenor himself, as well as by Kimberly M. Blaeser, A. Robert Lee,
Kathryn W. Shanley, David L. Moore, Chris LaLonde, Alexandra Ganser,
Cathy Covell Waegner, Sabine N. Meyer, Kristina Baudemann, and Billy J.
Stratton provide fresh perspectives on theoretical concepts such as trick-
ster discourse, postindian survivance, totemic associations, Native presence,
artistic irony, and transmotion, and explore his lasting literary impact from
Darkness in Saint Louis Bearheart to his most recent novels and collections
of poetry, S hrouds of White Earth , C hair of Tears, B lue Ravens, and F avor
of Crows . The thematic sections focus on “‘Truth Games’: Transnational-
ism, Transmotion, and Trickster Poetics”; “‘Chance Connections’: Memory,
Land, and Language”; and “‘The Many Traces of Ironic Traditions’: History
and Futurity,” documenting that Vizenor’s achievements are sociocultural
and political as much they are literary in effect. With their emphasis on
transdisciplinary, transnational research, the critical analyses, close readings,
and theoretical outlooks collected here contextualize Gerald Vizenor’s work
within different literary traditions and firmly place him within the American
canon.
Birgit Däwes is Professor and Chair of American Studies at the University
of Flensburg, Germany.
Alexandra Hauke is a university assistant and PhD candidate at the Depart-
ment of English and American Studies in Vienna.
Routledge Research in Transnational Indigenous Perspectives
Series editors: Birgit Däwes, Karsten Fitz and Sabine N. Meyer
Routledge Research in Transnational Indigenous Perspectives features schol-
arly work exploring both indigenous perspectives that are explicitly trans-
national and transnational perspectives on indigenous topics. As such, it is
committed to fostering and presenting high-quality research in the area of
Indigenous Studies, addressing historical and contemporary political, social,
economic, and cultural issues concerning the indigenous peoples of North
and South America, Europe, Australasia, and the larger Pacific region. The
series is thus not limited to one particular methodological approach, but
looks at the highly dynamic and growing field of Indigenous Studies that is
of central interest for a range of different disciplines.
Members of the series’ advisory board include Chadwick Allen (Ohio State
University); Philip J. Deloria (University of Michigan); Christian Feest (em.,
Johann-Wolfgang Goethe University Frankfurt); Hsinya Huang (National
Sun Yat-Sen University).
The series considers contributions from a wide range of areas in the field
of Indigenous Studies. These include but are not limited to:
• Indigenous literatures, film, performance, music and visual arts
• Indigenous peoples and the law, settler imperialism, rights and human
rights
• Indigenous histories, politics, knowledges and religion
• Representations of indigenous peoples in non-indigenous cultural pro-
ductions
• Indigenous peoples and the museum
• Indigenous languages
• Gender/Queer Indigenous Studies
• Transnational flows of indigenous ideas and cultures
• Methodological issues in Indigenous Studies
1 Twenty-First Century Perspectives on Indigenous Studies
Native North America in (Trans)Motion
Edited by Birgit Däwes, Karsten Fitz, and Sabine N. Meyer
2 Native American Survivance, Memory, and Futurity
The Gerald Vizenor Continuum
Edited by Birgit Däwes and Alexandra Hauke
Native American Survivance,
Memory, and Futurity
The Gerald Vizenor Continuum
Edited by Birgit Däwes
and Alexandra Hauke
First published 2017
by Routledge
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017
and by Routledge
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Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2017 selection and editorial matter, Birgit Däwes and Alexandra Hauke;
individual chapters, the contributors
The right of Birgit Däwes and Alexandra Hauke to be identified as
the authors of the editorial material, and of the authors for their
individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77
and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
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Contents
Acknowledgments vii
Introduction 1
BIRGIT DÄWES AND ALEXANDRA HAUKE
1 Expeditions in France: Native American Indians
in the First World War 8
GERALD VIZENOR
SECTION 1
“Truth Games”: Transnationalism, Transmotion,
and Trickster Poetics 17
2 Gerald Vizenor: Transnational Trickster of Theory 19
ALEXANDRA GANSER
3 Universal Peculiarities in Gerald Vizenor’s T he Heirs
of Columbus and Shrouds of White Earth 34
KATHRYN W. SHANLEY
4 Jiibayag Ashegiiwe : Revenants, Gerald Vizenor,
Odazhe-Giiwenigon 47
CHRIS LALONDE
5 The Late Mr. Vizenor: Recent Storying 63
A. ROBERT LEE
vi Contents
SECTION 2
“Chance Connections”: Memory, Land, and Language 73
6 Vizenor and the Power of Transitive Memories 75
KIMBERLY M. BLAESER
7 The Ground of Memory: Vizenor, Land, Language 90
DAVID L. MOORE
8 Gerald Vizenor’s Shimmering Birds in Dialog: (De-)Framing,
Memory, and the Totemic in F avor of Crows and
Blue Ravens 102
CATHY COVELL WAEGNER
SECTION 3
“The Many Traces of Ironic Traditions”: History
and Futurity 117
9 From Domestic Dependency to Native Cultural Sovereignty:
A Legal Reading of Gerald Vizenor’s C hair of Tears 119
SABINE N. MEYER
10 “Nothing More Than the Chance of Remembrance”:
Gerald Vizenor and the Motion of Natural Reason
in the Presence of War 135
BILLY J. STRATTON
11 Ecstatic Vision, Blue Ravens, Wild Dreams: The Urgency
of the Future in Gerald Vizenor’s Art 145
KRISTINA BAUDEMANN
Contributors 157
Index 163
Acknowledgments
This volume emerged from a conference at the University of Vienna in 2014,
which was organized in honor of both Gerald Vizenor’s 80th birthday and
the publication of his historical novel B lue Ravens that same year. From
the preparations for this gathering to the final manuscript, many an effort
was required in matters of organization, financing, and the overcoming of
various “manifest manners.” These efforts were shared and shouldered by
many, and we wish to express our sincere gratitude to a number of people
and organizations who have helped us to see this little raven of a project
leave its nest.
We profoundly thank the City of Vienna, its Department of Cultural
Affairs, the Lord Mayor’s office, the Vienna Convention Bureau, and the
Vienna Business Agency’s Expat Center, as well as the Austrian Federal Min-
istry for Europe, Integration, and Foreign Affairs, the Austrian Research
Foundation, and the University of Vienna—especially our Vice Rector, Prof.
Dr. Heinz Faßmann; the International Office; the Faculty of Philological and
Cultural Studies and our Dean, Prof. Dr. Matthias Meyer; and the Depart-
ment of English, with our then Head of Department, Prof. Dr. Barbara Seidl-
hofer, for their generous support. We owe a major debt of gratitude to the
Embassy of Canada (particularly H.E., Ambassador Mark Bailey; Coun-
cilors Paul Williams and Jonathan Sauvé; Roswitha Mayer and Jolanda
Kampa) and the Embassy of the United States of America (especially H.E.,
Ambassador Alexa Wesner; Counselors for Public Affairs Jan Krč, Robert
Greenan, and Kellee Farmer; as well as Mag. Karin Schmid-Gerlich and Har-
ald Lembacher) for their continuing kindness and generosity in supporting
our academic ventures, far beyond this conference and its proceedings. We
would also like to thank Bruce Alfred from the Kwakwaka’wakw nation in
British Columbia, as well as Ronja Ketterer, Stephanie Adam, Linda Dreier,
Johanna France, Petra Ladinigg, Yvonne Thumpser, Julia Veits, and Sophie
Wolf; our colleagues, Dr. Michael Draxlbauer, Dr. Alexandra Ganser, Nicole
Poppenhagen; our contributors; and all conference presenters. Not least,
without the unfailing expertise of Monika Fahrnberger and Kristina Baude-
mann and their critical eye for detail, this manuscript would still be “cab-
bage and turnips,” as a German saying goes.
viii Acknowledgments
Gerald Vizenor writes in Interior Landscapes that “stories are a better past
than merit badges” (60). Without his stories, none of the following chapters
would have been written, and since he’d refuse any merit badge, we will sim-
ply continue to cherish and celebrate the words of one of the greatest storiers
of our time. Thank you, Gerald.
Birgit Däwes and Alexandra Hauke
Flensburg and Vienna, October 2016
Introduction
Birgit Däwes and Alexandra Hauke
In Gerald Vizenor’s 2012 campus novel Chair of Tears , a new chairman is
put in charge of the bleak and unproductive Department of Native American
Indian Studies at the University of Minnesota. Captain “Carbon Six” Sham-
mer is a true trickster: having never “applied, auditioned, or petitioned for
the position” (23), he finds particular pleasure in his own definition of the
new job. He walks around on campus disguised as other faculty members;
he decides to remove all senior faculty from their offices by termination
policy, and he arrives at the first faculty meeting in the uniform of General
George Armstrong Custer.
Shammer posed at the threshold of the spacious conference room,
saluted the faculty, and then, at parade rest, he waited for the inevita-
ble countercries of vengeance, but the faculty, mostly former chairmen,
and several graduate students, were stupefied, overcome by the ironic
military resurrection, and [. . .] hailed the general with cavalry hoots,
howls, and horsey laughter. Captain Shammer had arrived by mimicry.
(24)
As readers will recognize, mimicry is a good survival strategy in any depart-
mental meeting, but Captain Shammer has to face particular challenges. His
department’s library is in a desolate condition: its resources have been either
stolen or borrowed indefinitely by faculty and students “by some obscure
sense of entitlement and right of discovery” (36). Thus it happens that only
empty shelves remain, with the exception of five books that no one would
touch: “ Hanta Yo: An American Saga by Ruth Beebe Hill; predictably an
unread copy of Indi’n Humor: Bicultural Play in Native America by Kenneth
Lincoln; a broken copy of The Primal Mind: Vision and Reality in Indian
America by Jamake Highwater; a coffee-stained copy of Earthdivers by Ger-
ald Vizenor; and an appropriately defaced copy of T he Education of Little
Tree by Forrest Carter” (36). In contrast to these shelfwarmers, there is a
successful media empire on campus named Denivance Press, which denies
any manuscripts for publication. Owned and managed by a certain Roberta
Lee Royalty, this press instead publishes blank books that only contain titles,